Parshas Noach

In a Heartbeat

By Rabbi Label Lam

Whoever spills the blood of man- in man -his blood shall be spilled
because in “the image of G-d”- He made man. (Breishis 9:6)

What is the meaning of “the blood of man in man”? They learned in the name
of Rabbi Yishmael that a Ben Noach (Gentile) is guilty for murdering a
fetus. (Sanherdin 57)

Rabbi Akiva explained, “Anyone who spills blood, the verse considers as if
they had diminished the Image of G-d!” (Midrash Aggada)

Why is there a justification for murdering a murderer? A few verses
earlier man had been given permission to eat from the animal kingdom as it
is written, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you like the
green herbage I have given you. (Breishis 9:3) Because of the diminished
spiritual stature of man the boundary between a man and an animal may
become blurred. An error in thinking might creep into the human psyche and
confuse the newly granted right to dispose animals to also include the
license to eliminate humans. It was aptly observed by Professor Shmuel
Hugo Bergman in remarks made at Yad Va-Shem, “The philosophy that lead to
the rise of Nazism was the 19th Century insistence on seeing man as a
zoological specimen.”

Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch ztl. in Horeb writes, “…he who kills a man
destroys all the activities in him which he could have contributed to the
physical world in the service of G-d. Hence, our Sages say, man was
created singly in order to teach that he who kills a man destroys a whole
world”

A senior study partner related to me an incident he vividly recalled from
his early days in Yeshiva. The Rebbe for their class came into the
classroom, just as any other day in Yeshiva. He

noticed that the boys were in an unusually giddy mood. Some secret or news
was detectable from the smirks they bore on their faces. The Rebbe asked
them what was up and one of the fellows told him with a chuckle, “You know
those two bums that squat in the basement of the Yeshiva? Last night it
seems they couldn’t get their dose of booze so they drank paint thinner
and one of them died and the other went blind.” The Rebbe went pale from
the report. He looked at the class with ferocious anger and
disappointment. He raised both hands and banged them with all his might on
the desk and crying bitter tears declaring repeatedly, “What are you
laughing for? A sky scraper has fallen! Class dismissed!” That was the
lesson of the day and for all time!

A fine middle aged businessman I was learning with for many years came to
our meeting with a look of deep concern on his face one day. It didn’t
take him long to spill the beans. He told me that his wife was expecting.
The two other children were already quite a bit older and he wasn’t sure
this was the “the right time” for this in their lives. We don’t need to
spell out every detail of the discussion here but suffice it say that he
understood in the end that the only moral option on the table was to do
everything possible to be sure that mother and child have the best chance
to be happy and healthy together. Years later he was bragging to me how
precocious this little girl- Haley is and how she is the “light of their
lives”. I reminded him of our earlier discussion and he shuddered visibly
when revisiting the terribleness of the option he had then considered.

What then is the strain of blindness that puts this point “above the pay
grade” of the supposed “most enlightened” and leads so many to think
something’s new under the sun? That should be cause to pause and wonder-
what lurks in the mind of one who would blithely delete another in a
heartbeat?